Established by Martin Eakes and Bonnie Wright in North Carolina in 1980, the nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help has grown from an innovative financial institution dedicated to civil rights into the nation's largest home lender to low- and moderate-income borrowers. Self-Help's first capital campaign—a bake sale that raised a meager seventy-seven dollars for a credit union—may not have done much to fulfill the organization's early goals of promoting worker-owned businesses, but it was a crucial first step toward wielding inclusive lending as a weapon for economic justice. In Lending Power journalist and historian Howard E. Covington Jr. narrates the compelling story of Self-Help's founders and coworkers as they built a progressive and community-oriented financial institution. First established to assist workers displaced by closed furniture and textile mills, Self-Help created a credit union that expanded into providing home loans for those on the margins of the financial market, especially people of color and single mothers. Using its own lending record, Self-Help convinced commercial banks to follow suit, extending its influence well beyond North Carolina. In 1999 its efforts led to the first state law against predatory lending. A decade later, as the Great Recession ravaged the nation's economy, its legislative victories helped influence the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Self-Help also created a federally chartered credit union to expand to California and later to Illinois and Florida, where it assisted ailing community-based credit unions and financial institutions. Throughout its history, Self-Help has never wavered from its mission to use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of justice to extend economic opportunity to the nation's unbanked and underserved citizens. With nearly two billion dollars in assets, Self-Help also shows that such a model for nonprofits can be financially successful while serving the greater good. At a time when calls for economic justice are growing ever louder, Lending Power shows how hard-working and dedicated people can help improve their communities.

This volume examines the evolution of credit in the western world and its relationship to power. Spanning several centuries of human endeavour, it focuses on western Europe and the United States and also considers how the western system became the global credit system.

States of Credit provides the first comprehensive look at the joint development of representative assemblies and public borrowing in Europe during the medieval and early modern eras. In this pioneering book, David Stasavage argues that unique advances in political representation allowed certain European states to gain early and advantageous access to credit, but the emergence of an active form of political representation itself depended on two underlying factors: compact geography and a strong mercantile presence. Stasavage shows that active representative assemblies were more likely to be sustained in geographically small polities. These assemblies, dominated by mercantile groups that lent to governments, were in turn more likely to preserve access to credit. Given these conditions, smaller European city-states, such as Genoa and Cologne, had an advantage over larger territorial states, including France and Castile, because mercantile elites structured political institutions in order to effectively monitor public credit. While creditor oversight of public funds became an asset for city-states in need of finance, Stasavage suggests that the long-run implications were more ambiguous. City-states with the best access to credit often had the most closed and oligarchic systems of representation, hindering their ability to accept new economic innovations. This eventually transformed certain city-states from economic dynamos into rentier republics. Exploring the links between representation and debt in medieval and early modern Europe, States of Credit contributes to broad debates about state formation and Europe's economic rise.

The Power of Credit is in Your Hands is a comprehensive guide to understanding the credit industry and advice on how to establish, repair and rebuild your credit history.

The end of the Cold War put the planet on a new track, abruptly replacing the familiar world of bipolarity, red phones, and intercontinental ballistic missiles with the strange new world of the Internet, e-commerce, and Palm Pilots. The "New World Order" was defined by a U.S.-led war against Iraq, bloody ethnic strife in Bosnia and Rwanda, and religious turmoil in Central Asia. This evolving global system, however, overlooked the powerful role of credit, which functions as a critical building block for developing greater national and individual wealth. This volume examines the evolution of credit in the Western world and its relationship to power. Spanning several centuries of human endeavor. it focuses on Western Europe and the United States and also considers how the Western system became the global credit system. Six major themes run throughout: (1) the direct relationship between credit and power; (2) different kinds of political power promote different kinds of economic behavior; (3) various societal and cultural groups were often more successful in mingling credit and political power; (4) the Western credit system evolved in tandem with the development of the nation-state; (5) historically, there has been a pattern of financial crises; (6) credit spread from being the privilege of the wealthy and powerful to being available to vast numbers. MacDonald and Gastmann have broken history into five periods, ranging from early pre-modern, defining the earliest references to banking and credit as exemplified by the Code of Hammurabi, circa 1726 BC, through the Roman Empire with its creation of money and growing use of credit in trade, the barbarian invasions of the 11th century which led to a breakdown in credit networks in the West, through the establishment of the Italian city-states, to the modern period which incorporates the rise of credit in the Low Countries in the 1500s and extends through the rise of London and New York as the major international credit hubs.

Few understand the power of credit, so many will never experience the benefits that come along with building a positive credit history. The good news is that you won't be one of those that miss out on the benefits because you have THE POWER OF CREDIT in your hand. This book will be your guide to establishing a strong credit profile. In the pages of this golden credit Bible you'll learn how to obtain high limit credit cards with CASH advances, how to save HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars in interest, how to earn free trips, how to earn cash rewards, how to profit from Authorized User accounts and more! The knowledge given in this short book will give you access to the capital that you need over the next few years which you can use to invest in any business venture you please!

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